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Erupting in ecstatic roars after three hours of white-hot passion, a packed Barbican audience rammed home a point which conductor Paul McCreesh (left) had made before he led his army onstage. This late oratorio by Handel deserved to be performed as often as Beethoven's Ninth, he declared in a pre-performance chat. Oh yeah, one felt [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Thursday, 25 June 2009 at 1:17 pm
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After Sally Potter’s cack-handed shot at Carmen – "stripping away the flamenco clichés’ to reveal what she pretentiously termed the ‘secret emotional geometry" – film directors have been wisely kept away from English National Opera. But Abbas Kiarostami’s take on Cosi Fan Tutte – imported from Aix-en-Provence, and resurrected here by his assistant Elaine Tyler-Hall, [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Tuesday, 23 June 2009 at 2:40 pm
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What makes a man approaching his 101st birthday fly the Atlantic, and penetrate the remotest reaches of Suffolk? "You can’t keep a composer away from his music," explains a smiling Elliott Carter, in Aldeburgh to witness a blizzard of his works in performance – plus the unveiling of a new one – and beginning his [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Monday, 22 June 2009 at 4:47 pm
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Just got back from Al Muhajiroun's "relaunch" which had to be abandoned. Here's what I filed:
Jerome TaylorRELIGIOUS AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT
The public relaunch of the controversial Islamist group Al Muhajiroun descended into chaos last night as a debate between the sect’s UK leader and the director of a centre right think tank had to be abandoned. [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Wednesday, 17 June 2009 at 8:25 pm
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Channel 4 are breathlessly puffing their new series The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies without a trace of irony: they actually believe their own preposterous publicity. And so – surprise surprise – do most of the hacks who are writing about it. They may (correctly) type young Alex Prior – round whom the whole edifice is built [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 10:51 am
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It sounded a neat idea, as Ian Bostridge outlined it in the Guardian. The Threepenny Opera’s perennial relevance – particularly marked, as capitalist binge leads to universal bust – makes it worth looking at anew: singing Lieder with Dorothea Roschmann and Angelika Kirchschlager prompted him to wonder "how wonderful it would be" to hear them [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Monday, 15 June 2009 at 11:11 am
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After singing waiters, and "flash opera" – a musical mob suddenly bursting into song in Waterloo station – supermarket opera is a relatively sedate concept; indeed, Glyndebourne’s go-ahead education department did one back in the Nineties. But Flatpack Opera takes the idea on interestingly, being not only set in a supermarket, but making that its [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Thursday, 11 June 2009 at 12:49 pm
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The Keyboard Charitable Trust is dedicated to a noble cause: helping gifted young pianists to build a career, at a time when their debut concerts – which 20 years ago used to be routinely reviewed – scarcely ever merit mention in the press. (Who he? Never heard of him. Tell us about someone we know…) [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Tuesday, 9 June 2009 at 5:17 pm
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When three young pianists tackle major works by Schumann at the Wigmore Hall on successive days, comparisons are mandatory. First up was the Kazakh pianist Temirzhan Yerzhanov, supported by a big cohort of his compatriots, who gave us eight pieces from Schumann’s "Bunte Blatter" plus his Piano Sonata No 1, followed by Prokofiev’s "Visions Fugitives" [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Friday, 29 May 2009 at 3:03 pm
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China’s fabled 30 million piano students haven’t yet thrown up the hoped-for army of stars. Among the few to have emerged, Lang Lang may be the most prominent, but he’s a mere peasant compared to his aristocratic coeval Yundi Li, whose playing and demeanour are oddly Chopinesque. (I sense Lang Lang is at least dimly [...]
By Michael Church | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Friday, 22 May 2009 at 11:00 am
